Football is sliding into a bubble of self-censorship and even Jurgen Klopp has gone quiet – inews

SportFootballPremier LeagueEvasion of questions about alleged rights abuses in Qatar was weirdly off-colour from the usually erudite and right-on Liverpool manager

Wednesday, 18th December 2019, 2:59 pm

Sometimes, no matter how vexing or obtuse a problem first seems, a working solution can be distilled simply by dent of the time, resources and willing that are available to be poured into solving it.

Ever since the oppressive Gulf state was revealed as the host for the 2022 World Cup, football leaders and officials in the liberal West have known they will have questions to answer on behalf of their clubs and national associations regarding the ethics of participation.

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In Liverpool's case, these games in Qatar have been in the diary since they lifted the Champions League trophy in June. They were not dropped on them suddenly, nor did the public discussion surrounding alleged abuses of rights by the regime in Doha crystallise overnight. On the question of time and brain-power, the club had sufficient whack with which to prepare a considered response to the predictable questions that greeted Jurgen Klopp when the team arrived in Qatar.

Yet facing the press on Tuesday the manager, who has previously shared so freely and carefully his views on matters relating to social justice, spoke like he had been deprogrammed, the evasive twaddle of one who is disengaged from the question and is herding the conversation back onto company-approved ground.

"I have an opinion on football, but this is a real serious thing to talk about, I think, and the answers should come from people who know more about it," Klopp said. "Organisers have to think about these things, not the athletes. I like that you ask the question, but I think I am the wrong person."

The club's position had, in part, already been made formal in the content of a letter sent by Anfield chief executive Peter Moore earlier in December to the London-based human rights group Fair/Square who campaign on behalf of the families of migrant workers killed during construction projects for the 2022 showpiece. In it, Moore wrote that the club had sought background detail assurances from the supreme committee of the World Cup organisers regarding progress on workers' rights, and backed the group's assertion that "all unexplained deaths should be investigated thoroughly".

The letter stopped short of proffering a condemnation of Doha's record on safeguarding workers' rights, what the group that called for it had euphemistically termed "a public statement of concern", a reminder that football has installed itself behind a kind of flood barrier to protect against the need for taking a meaningful position on the wider implications of the game's continued global growth. You expect it from the suits at the very top echelons. But from the erudite and usually shoot-from-the-hip Klopp, the dreary on-the-fence neutrality felt weirdly off-colour.

It's telling that this has come in the same week as Mesut Ozil's public criticism of the rights of Muslim minorities in China, and the various responses - or lack of - that his words have drawn from different quarters. His employers Arsenal broke their silence only to confirm that they intended to remain silently "apolitical" on the matter, whilst the ex-Manchester City midfielder Yaya Toure condemned Ozil's temerity in speaking out. Footballers have to stay with football and politicians to politics," said Toure. "Because you cannot be involved with this kind of thing, because it's going to attract a lot of problems." It's more sensible not to upset the apple cart when the apple cart is doling out your wage slips. Maybe the price of a conscience has simply become too high.

It isn't necessarily about placing income directly in jeopardy - though the fallout in China from NBA executive Daryl Morey's support for public protesters against the Chinese government in Hong Kong suggests that broadcasters, merchandisers and publicists will be prepared to pull their support for a sporting product over politics (several Chinese companies and brands have suspended or cut ties with the NBA following Morey's remarks in October.) China's state broadcaster was also quick to shelve plans to broadcast Arsenal's game against Man City on Sunday in the wake of Ozil's remarks.

This is really more a matter of culture, of the football establishment - of which Arsenal, Liverpool and Toure are intrinsically a part - showing public respect for those newest stakeholders in the global game who are paying astronomical sums for their seat at the table. They expect to be treated with the respect that their investments warrant. After all, what is the point in ploughing billions into campaigns to align rotten regimes with the world's most popular sport if organically likeable actors like Klopp are going to spit on you?

It's worth noting that the issues raised by Ozil and by Fair/Square don't come from conspiracy theories peddled by outliers and cranks. The causes of workers and LGBT rights in Qatar and of the situation of Muslim minorities in northern China are the concern of the United Nations and international NGO Human Rights Watch. There has been no moving of the moral goalposts, only a re-positioning of where football sits between them.

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Football is sliding into a bubble of self-censorship and even Jurgen Klopp has gone quiet - inews